Amstrad PCW Issues

PCW & Copying SuperCalc 2 Master Disk

Put in CPM+ disk. Turn on computer. Get to some form of command prompt, type DISKIT. Follow instructions.

Been told a DIR will give all valid command names, look for something obvious if this fails.

PCW10 - Changing Horizontal/Vertical Hold

To change the Horizontal/Vertical hold on these machines, look on the back of the CRT for a coil ... twist the coil and the hold will also change.

PCW 9512 - Printing Issues

Sheet Feeder Makes a Grinding Noise When Feeding Paper

This is normal. The sheet feeder is aligning the paper and is inserting the paper very slowly.

The Printer is Printing Rubbish

On the PCW9512 and PCW9512+, which use the daisywheel printer, it prints rubbish. You may get this problem particularly when inserting a new ribbon. In this case you have probably disturbed the daisywheel and knocked it lose. To reset it, pull the lever next to the printhead towards you and remove the daisywheel. Reset the printer by opening and closing the front part of the perspex panel. This will move the print head to the default position.

With one of the shorter petals facing directly upwards place the daisywheel back into the printer. The centre of the daisywheel has two holes. These need to go through the two pieces in the print head of the same shape that stick out. Push the lever back to lock the daisywheel into place.

Another reason for printing rubbish is that there is a system board fault.

Printing Greek or Foreign Characters

You have probably pressed the ALT key in conjunction with one of the function keys. This has activated the Locoscript support for alternative character sets such as Greek. To return to the standard English press ALT and F1.

Memory problems when upgrading the software

According to Locoscript if you upgrade from version 2 to version 3 and you encounter problems with it loading, this is due to bad memory on the board. The problem would not have shown on version 2 because it is loaded into a different memory address. There is a utility disk (The program is called RAMTEST)that can check the memory on the main board for these bad memory address.

PCW 8256 - Printing Issues

Using an external printer with the PCW8256

At the A: prompt put in the Programming Utilities disc into drive A: and type;

DEVICE LST:=CEN

This command sends all printer data to the centronics output. Note. The CEN command only works if you have the optional centronics port attached.